


The Last Battle

by Heather



Series: Project: X-Men [5]
Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Dark, Gap Filler, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-12
Updated: 2009-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:58:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/pseuds/Heather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene from "Five Years Gone." Peter and Sylar kick each other's asses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Battle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [s8219](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=s8219).



  
This is how it begins.

Peter is pulled by his shirt collar through a hallway door by a hand that zips through his vision, too quickly for him to see. As he flies down a hallway, his eyes seek the man who has thrown him while neurons fire wildly through his brain.

Peter has had little contact with Nathan since the bomb went off, less since he became president.

(_whispers of a thousand memories lurk in the back of his mind-_

"Get out of here. I'll take care of this."

"You can't take care of it, Nathan!"

"Peter. Just go."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Petrelli, but I'm afraid the president is a very busy man. He can't set aside the whole world just to see you.")

Peter hasn't known his brother- not really, not truly, not the way he used to- in a very long time. He has spent years hovering on the sidelines, marveling as he witnessed the dozens- _hundreds_\- of things he never would have suspected Nathan of being capable of.

But there are limits to Nathan's ability to surprise him, and finally, his attacker has crossed them.

"My brother can't walk through walls." Peter says. "Who are you?"

\----

Sylar never really intended to wear the Nathan Petrelli mask forever. It was a useful thing at the time, a skin to try on. Sylar has wanted for so long to be anything but Gabriel Gray that nearly anyone would do. Nathan Petrelli was only the latest in a series of people with lives just a little more special than the one he left behind.

Nathan's life came with family and connections. It came with power he never truly dreamed that he could have. (Sylar reaches for the stars, but this was the first time he ever managed to swallow one.)

It was fun while it lasted, but lately, Sylar has grown bored. He's not cut out for being president. As delicious as it is to perpetrate so many atrocities and watch everyone in the world nod their heads and agree it's necessary

(_The world is as sick and twisted as Sylar always thought it was. Thousands of people will scream about the precious and irreplaceable qualities of life when it's an unborn clump of tissue and potential, or soldiers on a battlefield, or a murderer on death row-_

-but who gives a damn about these strange beings, and their special abilities? Are they human enough to inspire sympathy? They may drink the same water, breathe the same air; they may have come from families like anyone else's.

But in the end, their lives are nothing but so many statistics on the news, and God bless President Petrelli, who knows a threat when he sees one, who came from a red-blooded American war hero that knew that sometimes freedom isn't free, who grew up with class and privilege and sees the national deficit as secondary to accomplishing a goal.

Thank God for Senator Petrelli, who knows how to save us.)

Sylar is tired of all this.

When Matt Parkman gives him the call that Peter Petrelli is in action in one of his facilities, Sylar goes down there in person, damn the charade and damn the consequences.

Peter's not the only one spoiling for a good fight.

\----

They face each other like brothers while the world comes crumbling down around them. It's fitting, they both agree, though for vastly different reasons.

Sylar is the demon that has haunted Peter for half a decade. Sylar is the shadow-self that Peter never dared acknowledge, the face that all his multitude of sin has been forced to wear. Peter has never known absolution or peace, because Peter has had to live with a burden the world believed to rest on Sylar's shoulders.

Peter is the other half that has eluded Sylar from the beginning. He is the man that Sylar thinks (_Gabriel Gray thinks_) his mother always wanted him to become. Peter has all the power Sylar ever wanted, and he got it because his heart can still break for cheerleader smiles and time traveler's optimism. Because he can hold a woman in his arms after he murdered her son, and still mean it when he whispers _I love you._

It's destiny, pure and simple.

They were made for each other.

\---

Peter's hands ignite with flames while Sylar's chill to the bone. Life and death, circling each other like rabid wolves, looking for a way in.

Peter moves first. The flames ripple down his arms and up the hall, wrapping like shackles around Sylar's frozen wrists. There would be pain, if it weren't for the fact that Sylar outgrew that triviality an hour and a half ago through the shattering of Claire Bennet's skull.

Sylar wants to laugh, but he freezes the moisture in the air instead, encasing Peter's flames in a crystalline prison that makes his fire shrink to near nothing and glow like Christmas lights. He jerks his arms away from it.

Peter is hit in the chest full force by Sylar's flying body while thousands of icicles fly around the room like tiny daggers.

They roll and tousle, red lightning emanating from Sylar's hands on Peter's throat while its brilliant blue twin passes over both of them. (Peter mourns the passing of Elle Bishop while Sylar barely remembers how Ando Masahashi tasted.)

Peter closes his eyes and remembers Alex Woolsly. He pulls oxygen in through the pores of his skin, and Sylar releases the grip on his throat to telekinetically re-open the scar across Peter's face.

Peter barely makes a sound when it happens, but the blood splatters all over both of them, and inside their minds, both remember what it's like to _mean it_ when you say that you want to kill.

Peter leaps to the ceiling above them, the pads of his fingers and the soles os his shoes clinging to the tiles there while his center of gravity shifts and he looks down at Sylar with a bloody, deranged smile. His scar knits itself shut while his blood seeps back into his skin.

"I thought you lost that ability." Sylar notes aloud dispassionately. It hardly matters, but it is interesting to note.

"I'm full of surprises." Peter says, and it's such a cliché, such a patented 'hero' response, that Sylar is caught up in rolling eyes when Peter's hand leaves the ceiling to rip a gash across Sylar's face that matches the one on his own.

Sylar gapes at him for this, for the way it feels like cheating. This is _his_ ability, the first he took, and the one he favors above them all. For Peter to use it is an experience akin to having a beloved pet turn around and savage you.

Peter watches the gash close up, as his own just did, and momentarily freezes.

"Hm." Sylar says. "I guess I am, too."

Peter's face contorts with fury and he hurls himself down on top of Sylar, seizing hold of him by the lapels. It's Niki's rage that propels him forward, slamming Sylar headfirst into and then through the wall.

Sylar laughs as the mortar crumbles around him. He flips Peter over his head, like children playing at leap frog, and tosses him into the corridor on the other side.

Peter's arms have already erupted in flames before he even makes contact with the wall, and the wall of fire that reaches for Sylar is almost the size of a tidal wave.

But they've played this game already, and Sylar wonders what Peter's playing at. If he's really that big of a one trick pony. Because he doesn't realize that Peter's only goal is to cause him blistering pain.

Sylar's coat ignites, though he does not. He weaves the fire around him this time, as simple as agitating the molecules in the air to create a miniscule cyclone. It wraps them both like the hottest wind, and for a moment, they both burn.

Peter's mind extends to the pipes in the ceiling above them.

Oblingingly, they explode.

Water rapidly fills the hallway, dousing them both and extinguishing the flames. Both men cast aside the soaking wet tatters of coats they wear, and Peter's arms, sparking once more with bright blue electricity, sink into the water accumulating around them.

Sylar's body jerks and dances out of his control as the charge courses through him, at a speed he can't clock and a lethality he can't afford. His heart tries to burst under the hot pressure, and though he can heal from it, he can't let himself lose those few precious seconds of time.

He pulls himself together enough to fly above the water, breaking the current. Peter rises above the water and into the air to do the same.

It's unclear who reaches for who first, but they are locked together and flying down the hall. Below them, the rising tide becomes solid ice, and Sylar drives Peter into it, smashing his face against the cold with a satisfying crack.

Blood pours down Peter's face for the second time as the cartilage in his nose shatters backwards against the hard bone of his skull. It itches as it heals, the blood washing down his chin this time before the wound is closed. He lets the bones in his legs go soft and malleable, then winds them between himself and Sylar at odd angles, at once impressive and grotesque. Peter winds his body back into its proper configuration, and slams his feet into Sylar's chest with the speed and force of a jackhammer.

Sylar falls prey to gravity and hits his own sheet of ice, the breath momentarily punched from his lungs, and dimly notices the sound of several cracks. He is uncertain which are the ice and which are his newly broken vertebrae.

His bones seal themselves back into place just in time for Peter to pounce on him and begin pounding in his skull.

Teeth crack. His lips are shredded on their knife-sharp fragments before they grow back. His nose breaks. His blood is upon him like lakes and rivers of the brightest red. He laughs hysterically at every blow.

"Tell me, Peter," he says while Peter's fist is drawn back inches above his face, "were you ever a schoolyard bully?"

Peter snarls in mounting frustration and hurls Sylar through another wall.

Sylar crashes to the floor and turns to look as Peter approaches him. He raises his hands into the air and unleashes utter chaos.

The ground beneath them begins to rumble and shake, while the winds outside pick up speed into a hurricane. The windows around them shatter under the pressure and Peter barely ducks the flying shards as the growing earthquake causes him to lose his footing.

The winds swirl through the corridors around them, the air wet with the beginning of rain outside. Peter growls again and throws himself on top of Sylar. He grabs for Sylar's throat while Sylar laughs, and Peter images Sylar's thoughts: _What good do you think that's going to do against me?_

The tiniest moment of empathy is all Peter needs.

The rain drops flying through halls turn into bullets of ice, which are then crushed against the solid wall of an invisible force field. Peter does this again and again, faster than any other mind could calculate, until the two of them are walled in together in a tiny chamber of ice.

The storm is sealed out, for the moment, and Peter can lock his gaze onto the man before him. Sylar rises to his feet and smiles.

"You can't win, you know." He says.

"Neither can you." Peter replies.

"Maybe not." Sylar says with a callous shrug, as if this is immaterial to him. "But I can do this for a very long time. I wonder how long you can hold up."

Sylar's jaws wrench tightly shut against his will, and he finds himself telekinetically pinned against the wall. Peter's hands are curled before him like a puppet master pulling all of the strings.

"I've wanted to kill you," Peter says, "for... God, _so_ long."

Sylar feels a loosening pressure on his face and the faintest of amusement to go with it. Apparently, Peter wants to hear what he has to say to that. "You never will." He smiles. "She gave me that, too. Your little Claire."

Peter's face is rapidly darkening with a delicious rage.

"There is absolutely... _nothing_... that you can do to me now." Sylar says. "We're two immortals, stuck together for the rest of eternity. Someday, the world will be come to an end, completely empty, except for you... and me." Sylar's smile broadens with something that vaguely manages to resemble something like delight.

"Just us." Peter mutters to himself, horrified by the very concept.

"I guess we'll really be like family then." Sylar says.

Peter shakes his head. "No."

Sylar chuckles. "Well, the alternative is that we do this forever."

"I thought you could hold out for a long time." Peter says, his voice thick with a poisonous mocking that sounds out of place, coming from a man so concerned with being a good little boy.

"Peter," Sylar says, his tone taking on a cruel imitation of pity, "have you ever tried to imagine forever?" He barely pauses long enough to pretend he wanted an answer. "Most people can't wrap their heads around it. I doubt you can."

Peter looks at him expectantly. For the moment, he's listening.

"There's never going to be an end of us." Sylar says. "No end to this. No... judgement, no reward, no higher meaning. It's going to be day after day, just like this one. Without anything bringing that to an end. Think about that."

Peter doesn't look impressed. "You really think I haven't thought about this?"

"I don't credit you with being exceptionally cerebral." Sylar says lightly.

Peter looks at him with narrowed eyes. "Is this the part where you tempt me? Where you show me it doesn't have to be this way? We can--" His lip twists into a sneer. "--rule the galaxy as father and son?"

"I thought 'brothers' was more fitting." Sylar says.

"That's not going to happen." Peter shakes his head yet again.

"And why is that, Peter?" Sylar asks. "Someone give you a better offer?"

"Yeah." Peter replies. "One without you."

"Haven't you been listening? There's never going to be a world without me, Peter."

"Yes." Peter says. "There is." His posture straightens, straight and tall as a balance beam. His head slowly tilts to one side, and he whispers, in a voice so far from his own, a voice thick and layered with double tones, reverberating deep in his throat like a command from God: _"Die."_

Impossibly... Sylar does.


End file.
